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Years ago, before I had a real website or knew what I was doing with pricing, I ran a little workshop out of my studio. Just a few hours, materials included, you go home with a small piece. I charged €35 because I was scared to ask for more and it covered the tile and the wine. A tourist from Australia came, loved it, posted about it. Next thing I know it's on some blog. Fine. But then her friend emails me asking if I can do a private session for four people at the same price. I said yes because I'm an idiot who hadn't learned to say "that was a group rate." Now eight years later I sometimes still get people who found that old blog post and expect the €35 price. I've raised it to €65 and they look at me like I'm trying to sell them a car. I should have changed the name of the workshop or something. Instead I just have to be the bad guy every time someone shows up with a screenshot from 2016.

I’m working on a new series of screenprints, trying to achieve really precise layering for subtle color shifts. The problem is registration, especially when I want a transparent ink to sit perfectly over another. I'm using a vacuum frame and my usual registration pins, but the slight give in the mesh, even on fine counts like 180, seems to be causing tiny shifts between layers. It's most noticeable when I have light colors over darker ones, where any misalignment breaks the illusion of depth. Has anyone found a clever workaround for this, beyond just meticulous alignment? Maybe a different type of registration system or a way to better tension the fabric on the frame itself?

cleaned my entire workspace yesterday. spent like 2 hours reorganizing, threw out old dried up paint tubes, wiped down the palette, the whole thing. looked at it and felt very adult and put together. woke up this morning and it already looks like a bomb went off. there's a rogue paint lid stuck to my forearm and i don't remember when that happened. i think the desk just reproduces chaos overnight when i'm not looking. it's personal at this point. anyway the painting i'm working on is going fine but the space around it is actively hostile. who else's studio is just a controlled disaster that you've given up on pretending to tame

I had a gallery once that took my collages and then asked if I could "add more colour" to fit the rest of the show. I said no, and that was that. But it stuck with me, how much are you willing to adjust your work for a space? Has a gallery ever asked you to change what you make to suit them? And did you do it, or walk?

the first gallery that gave me a real conversation told me my work was "interesting but not commercial" and i didn't know if that was a compliment or a warning. turned out it was both lol. still think about it years later. what's the most memorable thing, good or bad, a gallerist has said to you that stuck? the kind of line you still replay in your head

I've been selling small etchings for €180 since 2021. Same size, same paper, same amount of work. Three years of the same number while my studio rent in Berlin went up twice and the price of copper plates nearly doubled. Last month I finally raised them to €240. Not a huge jump. Still probably too low for the time that goes in. But I did it. Then a former professor, someone whose opinion I actually respect, saw the new price list and said, in that careful tone, that the pricing was "ambitious." Asked if I was worried about "pricing myself out" of the market. The market being what, exactly? The market of people who think art should cost as much as a nice dinner? I didn't say what I wanted to say, which is that I know etchers in London charging £400 for a similar plate and nobody calls that ambitious. I just said I'd think about it. Now I'm sitting here wondering if I should have raised them more, or if I'm actually wrong. The math says €240 is still a bad hourly rate when you add up drawing time, plate prep, printing, editioning. But the voice of that professor is stuck in my head.

There's a Saturday market in Galway I've been doing on and off for maybe twelve years. Rain, hail, the odd glorious day where everyone's in great form. And I used to think the point of it was to shift prints, which it is, but the real thing it taught me is how to talk to people about what you make without sounding like you're selling. You get all sorts at a stall. The tourist who wants something that says Ireland without being a leprechaun on a toilet. The local who stops because they recognise the pier or the mountain. The person who clearly loves the work but hasn't got thirty quid and stands there turning a card over in their hands. And you learn, quick, that the ones who buy aren't the ones you try to convince. They're the ones you just talk to, normally, about the carving or the ink or the hare that lives in the field behind your house and won't let you get near it. The thing that stuck with me is this: I've never sold a print by telling someone how good it is. I've sold plenty by telling them the story of the night I carved it and nearly took the tip of my finger off, or how the block got dropped in a puddle and the crack became part of the print. People want the thing behind the thing. They don't want a pitch. Anyway. The market's grand for that. But online, I still catch myself trying to sound like a proper business instead of just a fella in a jumper with ink under his nails. And the minute I do that, engagement drops off a cliff. The posts that work are always the ones where I forget I'm supposed to be marketing and just talk about what happened today. Sure I don't know where I'm going with this except that the best marketing advice I ever got was from a woman buying a print of a heron who said "just tell me why you made it" and walked away with two.

so i did the math months later and that's like $18/hr before materials. and she was the one who suggested the price, i just nodded. i knew it was low but i didn't wanna be the guy who haggles with a friend. now every time i look at that painting i just see $18/hour staring back at me. i don't even know what i'd have said if i had to name it. 500? 800? feels fake to ask for that. but 200 also feels fake for 11 hours. so i'm stuck in the middle where both numbers feel wrong and i just don't talk about money with anyone i know personally anymore lol

okay so I finally landed my first gallery showing last year and the whole process was honestly such a mess I'm still not sure I did it right. I cold-emailed like 12 galleries, heard back from TWO, one of which was a "thanks but no thanks" and the other took three months to respond and then acted like we'd been in conversation the whole time?? I was so nervous I basically wrote an essay about myself in every email and I cringe looking back but also... it worked?? eventually?? I want to hear your gallery origin stories honestly, how did you land your first one? Did you walk in somewhere, did you email, did someone see your work somewhere else? Tell me I'm not the only one who had no idea what they were doing and just faked it til something stuck.

I went to this gallery in a different city last year, showed them my portfolio, old Bangalore houses, chai stalls, morning light in a certain neighbourhood. And the gallerist looks at me and goes, "This is lovely, but can you make it look more Indian?" I didn't even know what to say. I paint what I see every day. What does "more Indian" even mean? She wanted bright Bollywood colours and lotuses or something, I think. Anyway I didn't take it further obviously. But it stuck with me, that assumption that your work needs to perform some idea of where you're from, rather than just being honest about what you actually see and paint. Anyone else ever been asked to "look more" like something? Or the opposite, told you're too X and should tone it down? What's the weirdest feedback a gallerist has given you about your identity or subject matter?

I've been painting seriously again for about six years now, and I still keep ending up with the same brand of paint I started with. I've tried the fancy ones at workshops, bought a couple tubes of stuff that cost $12 each, and I always go back to the $4 tubes from Michaels. Maybe it's just what I learned on and I'm used to the consistency. Or maybe I'm telling myself it doesn't matter to justify being cheap, ha. But honestly I got a tube of something nice at a workshop last spring and it dried out weird and I was annoyed. So I'm back to my usual. Anyone else stuck on a brand they probably should have outgrown by now?

Back when I was still doing fabrication for other artists, I used to buy a lot of limestone from this old guy out in Indiana. Third generation quarry family. Tough customer. You showed up late, he'd make you wait. You talked too much, he'd just walk away mid-sentence. One day I'm complaining about a commission that fell through. Client loved the maquette, then ghosted. I'd put three weeks into it. He's loading stone onto my truck and he doesn't even look up. Says "Did you ask for money before you started?" No. Of course not. I was young and wanted the work. He says "Then you didn't have a client. You had a hope." That stuck with me. For years I operated like making the thing was the hard part and selling it would just happen if the work was good enough. That's not how it works. The stone dealer knew that. The gallerists I've dealt with know it too, they just don't say it out loud because the silence benefits them. I'm not saying be a salesman. I'm saying the transaction is part of the arrangement, not an afterthought. If you can't talk about money with someone before you make them anything, you don't have a deal yet.

She told me my photos were too dark. That the lighting was "giving dungeon." She wanted me to show my face more, film myself working, add trending audio. I sat there in the meeting and I thought, I'm 58 years old. I build environments from scrap metal and broken furniture. I am not a content creator. I am not a brand. I am a person who makes things in a studio that looks like a bomb went off in a scrapyard. But the thing is she wasn't wrong about the engagement numbers. They're flat. They've been flat. And I don't know what to do with that information because I refuse to make the kind of content that would fix it. So I'm stuck in this weird space where I understand the game and I also refuse to play it. Anyone else just quietly accepting obscurity because the alternative looks unbearable?

found this landscape at goodwill for $4. someone painted it carefully, every tree has individual leaves, the sky is blended smooth. i bought it because i wanted to collage over it, use the sky as a ground for something else. but now i can't bring myself to touch it. it's not good, technically, but you can feel the time in it. someone sat with this for hours. maybe it was a gift. maybe it hung in someone's kitchen for thirty years. i keep pulling it out of the stack and putting it back. i've had it for three months. i know the rational thing is to just work on something else. but this is the one i keep circling. anyone else get stuck on a piece of source material like it's a person you owe something to?

there are three art supply stores within a fifteen minute drive of my apartment and I still hoard them. it's pathological. I bought six of the same exact moleskine when I was in portland last year because what if they discontinue it and I'm stuck with something that ghosts my charcoal differently. the worst part is I only fill maybe two a year. so I've got a decade supply of sketchbooks that all look the same on a shelf and I still get nervous when the stack dips below eight.

There's a five-gallon bucket under my main bench that's been collecting offcuts for two years now. Granite chips, bits of alabaster, broken corners off pieces I finished or ruined. I tell myself I'll use them for something someday. Mosaic maybe. Or just crush them for texture in a base. I've never done it. I just keep dropping scraps in there and looking at it sometimes. Some habits are just habits. Not everything needs a reason. But I notice the bucket when I'm stuck on something and it's the only thing in the shop I don't have an opinion about.

I've been using Sennelier oil sticks for years. Usually reliable, a bit soft in warm weather but nothing you can't work around. The one I bought last week, a raw umber, came out of the tube with the consistency of toothpaste that's been left uncapped all night. Crumbly, dry, almost no oil feel at all. I had to break it up and mix it with stand oil just to get it to stick to the knife. I emailed the supplier. They said it's a known issue with a batch from the summer. No recall, but they'd replace it if I sent photos. Which I did, but I'm stuck on the fact that they knew and still shipped it. That's three tubes of paint I've had problems with this year across different brands and I'm starting to wonder if the supply chain issues everyone talked about in 2022 are still showing up now as rushed batches and bad checks. Anyway. The raw umber is fine now after the intervention. But I shouldn't have to doctor a Sennelier stick like it's cheap student grade. Anybody else hit a dud batch lately or is it just me.

Had a guy walk through the studio two years ago, spent 45 minutes looking at a welded steel piece, said he didn't like it and left. Eight months later he emails me asking if it's still available. I tell him it is. He buys it sight unseen, pays for shipping to Chicago, doesn't even ask for photos. I asked him later what changed. He said he kept thinking about it. Couldn't get it out of his head. That stuck with me more than any compliment ever did. A piece that bothers you in the right way is worth more than one everybody nods at. I don't think about likes anymore. I think about whether the thing sits in someone's mind like a splinter.

pulled an old canvas out of the closet today that i started in like... 2021. deep in the bad year. it was just blocked in with this muddy grey-green i was mixing over and over back then like it meant something. couldn't finish it. couldn't throw it out either. finally figured out what it wanted today. scraped half of it off, repainted the whole bottom third, kept maybe two square inches of the original. it's done now. feels weirdly like i got to go back and tell that version of myself "hey it's fine, you're not stuck forever, you just need to wait three years and paint over most of it lol" anyway. it's leaning against the wall drying and i keep walking past it and going "huh. okay. it's good." feels like i earned that one.

ngl, i've got a pile of canvases in the corner that are like, 80% done and just staring at me. i know the move is to just push through and finish them but honestly i've been spending more time scrolling pinterest for new ideas than actually committing to these existing ones. pretty sure i've only finished like, 3 paintings this entire year. anyone else get stuck in this loop? lol